Basics– Horrors of the elemental apocalypse are upon us! It’s time for new heroes to rise! This book provides new player options including new races like the deep gnomes and the genasi. This book also proves a surprising number of spells for almost all the classes except for clerics

Mechanics or Crunch– Honestly, it’s good to get ANYTHING from the currently quite WotC. The new races are all well done. These races are not anything new for the system, but they are new to the current rules set. The spells all look great, and they add some new diversity to the ones from the core set. It’s just good to get some more! The one problem I do have is the exclusion of clerics from the rules. What here is good, but he absence of some things are noticed. 4.75/5

Theme or Fluff- This does have some fluff to it. Each race has a write up that adds some impressive diversity to the races in the Forgotten Realms. Again, these write-ups are not anything new as the races are all old favorites from at least fourth edition, but it’s good to hear what these races have been up to since fourth edition DnD ended. The spells all have some great elemental flavor. What I did want that wasn’t here was some bonds to draw characters in as well as some background on the adventure. My players all loved this new book, but the current season doesn’t have that much background to front load the adventure like the Paizo Player’s Companion books for their adventure paths. I love what I’m reading, but I’d like a bit more to bring the playing in. 4.25/5

Execution– I’m really digging the new layout for the DnD books. This book feels like an RPG, but it also feels fresh. Sure it’s a short book, but getting this much content from another company would cost you $5 from Monte Cook games, and Paizo doesn’t even offer this much content in their free player adventure path companion books! The font is good, the spacing is great, and the art is fantastic. There is only one piece of art that I know has been reused, so that’s even more top marks for WotC, who has notoriously reused art in the past. If you can keep this up, I’ll buy more player books when they happen! 5/5

Summary– This isn’t perfect, but it is amazing. And, it’s FREE! I’m really surprised that this book is free. It’s got an impressive amount in it for the first really player expansion out there. I know that we, the player base, can’t expect to get free books forever, but if this is the treatment I’m going to get for all of the adventure seasons, I’ll be happy. I would like more, but for the price and the content, I’m thrilled! 93%